57 - Preservation and Translation, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are very glad to have you with us.

We welcome all of our new students with us. If you are a new student, we encourage you to buy a syllabus.

What you get with a syllabus is the notes that we include, some of which we go over and sometimes we don't and we just leave it in the notes, so it's a good thing to have the syllabus.

You could pick the syllabus up at our store, by the way, strivingforeternity .org.

You can grab a copy of that syllabus. Basically, the advantage of having a syllabus is kind of that you get all of the notes, but you also have some space for you to fill in your own notes as we go along, as you're going to need to do tonight a little, and then you get to just have it readily available.

That's kind of one of the advantages. So, as we've been going through this systematic theology, lesson by lesson, we are right now in book number three, which we are saying is

God speaks to the world. This is the doctrine of the Bible. And we're still in lesson number six, which is

Preservation and Translation. And we said that we were going to be in this two weeks.

Last week, dealing with preservation, we looked at last week, last lesson was on ancient translations.

In there, we looked at things like the Spittuagin and the Vulgate, and we started talking about translations and how we got the translations that we got, and some of the myths that many people have with translations.

The idea that many who attack the Bible when they talk about things like higher criticism or textual criticism, what they do is they try to say that the

Bible was copied and edited and changed, and we exposed why that doesn't work.

The reality is that the theories that people have for how the Bible that we have today wouldn't be the

Bible that we had in its original, well, that's true to a sense.

But the fact that we can't understand the meaning of the Bible, yeah, that doesn't make sense.

And that's what we looked at last week. Now, I will say this because this was surprising, I guess, to me, how many

Roman Catholics responded to two lessons ago when we dealt with the Apocrypha.

And we're going to deal with an issue today when we talk about translations, and we're going to deal with something, the

King James issue. Some people believe that the King James Bible was inspired.

We're going to deal with that in this lesson. And so, I'm going to give you guys some pointers.

So, when you want to attack us that are working on these classes, and you want to make your accusations like happened with the

Roman Catholics when we did the lesson on the Apocrypha, I'm going to give you lessons and some techniques on how to properly make an argument, okay?

Because what we saw was that many people seem to respond to the lesson on the

Apocrypha, and they were saying how we were historically accurate, inaccurate, and this lesson is filled with historical inaccuracies and logical fallacies.

And person after person after person, we asked one question, can you name some?

And not one person could. If you're going to make an argument, please be specific.

Don't just say some broad thing like, you're an idiot. Okay, we can agree. Maybe I am an idiot.

No arguments there. That doesn't mean that the point that's being made is wrong, okay? Idiots make true points too, don't they?

Yes. See, when you have someone that makes the argument, you're just being an idiot. You're being dumb.

You're just making logical fallacies. Well, name the fallacy and give the example. If you're going to say it's a logical fallacy, you better be ready to tell me what the fallacy is and where we made that logical fallacy.

If you're not willing to do that, then please don't throw out the mud, okay? Because that's really it is.

People throw enough mud hoping to see where it might stick, and then if it sticks, they can go, see, you got mud on your face.

Um, if you're going to make an argument, please, here's the hint. Think about what you're saying.

Think about if I was to make that argument to you, would it be convincing? Because if the issue is just you're a dummy, okay, that's your opinion.

But that doesn't mean what is said is wrong. And the reason people end up saying things like that is because they want to try to, they realize they can't discredit what they say.

And so they end up arguing, you know, to attack the person. But by saying a lesson is filled with historical inaccuracies, and so one of the historical inaccuracies, one person did attempt to it.

They said that there were other Bibles that had the Apocrypha in it.

And they gave an example of the Geneva Bible. And yeah, so?

So the King James had the Apocrypha in it. So the Geneva had the Apocrypha in it.

That doesn't mean it was ever taken as inspired. You see, the logical fallacy is when they say, well, that was included in the

Bible. But we said why that was included. It's always been with historical writings because it was of good historical value.

But never did we see it accepted as canon. And that's the issue. Just the fact that I have in a concordance or a section in the back of my

Bible that has archaeological information doesn't mean that information is inspired.

It just means it's helpful. I have a study Bible. That doesn't mean that the author's notes of the study

Bibles inspired. It means that those are helpful. And that's why they're included.

That's the point. So the fact that these things were helpful doesn't mean they were inspired. That's not an inaccuracy.

OK? So when you make your argument, as I'm sure some who believe that the King James Bible was inspired by God will make as we go through this lesson, because we're going to focus on that a little bit.

They're going to make those arguments. Please, when you do so, could you please try?

Try really hard to give some very clear, specific examples and don't just throw mud.

Because if you just make an argument and you can't support it, you're in sin.

Just saying. Um, maybe some of them, you're right. Maybe some of them don't care that they're in sin.

They just want to throw mud because they're more about their pride. They want to be right. So last week we looked, we started looking at the family of Greek translations.

In your syllabus, this is Roman numeral number two. Roman numeral number two.

And I'm going to give, especially on this first point, a lot more information than we have in your notes.

So you can get some more, because one of the things with manuscripts is that we keep discovering more and more and more of them.

And it's hard to keep up with this stuff. So in future syllabuses, we'll keep trying to update these things, but the videos probably, well, they're going to be dated and we'll try to redo some of these maybe.

But as you look in your syllabus, I'm going to just review this part that we went over last lesson, but this is a very detailed area of study concerning why there are variations among the best and modern translations.

While it is an important study, it needs to be understood that it only affects at most a tenth of the

Bible. A tenth, that's your blank there, of the Bible and does not, that's bolded if you notice in your syllabus, affect any major doctrine of Scripture.

There are basically three families of manuscripts, basically, because there's more.

And we keep saying, if you remember, it's really important to go back to the previous lesson when we talk about this, how we have manuscripts.

The manuscripts were copies from the Greek. Do we have the original? Probably not.

I say probably not because we may have it and not discovered. One of the things people don't realize is we have lots and lots and lots of manuscripts that people are going through.

We just don't have enough people to look at them and evaluate them and date them and check them for accuracy.

But there's some things we would know. If we had an original copy, there's some things we would know. We would know that it wouldn't have chapter breaks.

It wouldn't have verse breaks. It wouldn't have punctuation. It wouldn't have spaces. Those things weren't included. Those things came a couple hundred years after the

Bible. So if it has those things, we know it's not original. We would be able to maybe identify some things that may identify it as being possibly an original, but how would we really know?

We really wouldn't. So we may have manuscripts that actually are an original, and we don't know.

But what they did is they had the original. They tried to make as many copies as possible. And for that sake, it's the advantage of making so many copies that we know that no major doctrine is affected because we know where these variances are.

We talked about that in the last lesson. And so it should give us an encouragement to know that when people say, well, it's been edited.

Look at this one. Look at this one. They're different. Okay, they're different.

I agree. What doctrine is based on that? I gave you the example, the strongest argument that Bart Ehrman could give, his argument was, well, some translations, some manuscripts say that Jesus was the son of a carpenter and some say he was a carpenter.

Big deal. I mean, there's no doctrine based off that. Well, there's 1

John. It says there's three witnesses, and that speaks of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

And that's not in the earlier manuscripts. Big deal. I don't need that to make the argument of the

Trinity. You see, I don't need that one point, that one verse. Plenty of other verses

I can go to. So with that, let us start with our first family, and that is our

Alexandrian manuscripts. So let's read what we have here. These manuscripts make up the oldest, that's your blank there, the oldest family of Greek manuscripts that the modern translations use that are, and when you look at this, your

New American Standard, much of your, I think, ESV, Holman, well, see, a lot of the newer translations actually, that's right, a lot of the newer translations are dealing with far more than just one manuscript, okay?

So you got to keep that in mind. You're dealing with them evaluating all of the manuscripts, and that's something different with some of the earlier.

When we look at King James, it was really based off of one family and not looking at all of them, but as we look at the wealth of them, if you have, say, a

New King James Bible, you're going to see little footnotes that will tell you this is included in this manuscript but not that manuscript, all right?

New American Standard is primarily just based on the Alexandrian, and we're going to look at some others that are based solely on one.

We're going to look at King James, and even New King James is primarily on the

Byzantine manuscripts, which is the next one, and we're going to look at that. But what you end up seeing is, as you look at this, we've found a lot more of the older manuscripts now, these

Alexandrian manuscripts. We find money more. One of the reasons that the older ones are considered to be a little bit better now, it used to be that there were very few copies, not as many copies, and so the larger number of copies were somewhat more trusted, but now we have many more of the older copies, and so we're getting closer to the original.

So, if there were changes that occurred, we end up getting closer to where there were fewer changes, and many of the translations that we have today are going to be based off of multiple manuscripts, not just one, okay?

And so, we have to keep in mind that the Alexandrian manuscripts, we have a lot more of them now, and we're finding them in fun places like mummies' tombs.

They used scrap paper to mummify people, and as we're finding these mummies and we're peeling off the layers, we're finding old copies of the

New Testament that were used to mummify people, and we're finding very, very old manuscripts of the

Bible, some within 30 years of their writing. That's valuable, and we're finding lots of those things.

There's some that are, because remember, this is written on organic material. It ends up fading.

The letters fade. One of the things that's cool about being in our generation is the new technology.

There's actually machines so that they can take a layer and scan it with a scanner, and in scanning it, they can kind of peel off each layer and figure out, even though the ink has deteriorated to where we can't read the letters, it's still left an imprint on the paper, and they can figure out the letters using infrared scanning and things like that.

Really cool stuff. So, they're able to go back and figure out now some of these things.

We also see the fact that what makes it sometimes hard to read these and why it takes so much work is that what they'd often do with these manuscripts is when paper was expensive.

So, what they'd do is they'd kind of whitewash it. They'd kind of paint over it so that they can rewrite on it again.

Well, the problem is as the paint and stuff fades, you have letters upon letters, and it's hard to know what's the original, right?

And so, that is some of the things that makes it difficult, but we're getting more and more of these older Alexandrian manuscripts, and you'll notice each of these are really identified by where they're found, right?

And so, we're starting to find that there's more trustworthy older manuscripts than the Byzantine, and that's the next one, the

Byzantine manuscripts. These manuscripts were reproduced in about 1000

AD, and so they were thought to be very reliable because of the numbers of them.

Now, why is the numbers important? Well, because you have so many that agree, that gives it the consistency, right?

Well, we have many now of the Alexandrian, and they're older. And so, because they're older, it's seen that they're closer to the original, and now we're seeing where some changes have happened.

What happens? You send a copy, right? We talked about this last lesson. I send a copy down to Alexandria, another copy to Byzantia, and what happens?

They start making copies of those copies. Well, if those copies, when I'm in a rush to get them out, if they each have differing variances, those variances are going to be copied, and that's what ended up taking place.

So, the Byzantine family makes up, and this is now dated, what we have in the notes there is 80 to 90 % of the ancient manuscripts.

That's not the case anymore. I think it's actually closer to like 60, maybe even 50%.

So, it used to be that this was the dominance of the

Byzantine Empire, which would reproduce the Byzantine text types, and the reason for the high percentage of them, they were mass producing.

So, in the Byzantine area, they were, in the Empire, mass producing because the church was behind it.

This was long ago, kind of before the split between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, but you had the church major, you know, was funding it.

Well, you didn't have that in Alexandria as much, so there was a lot more copies being made, and that would be why there were so many, but we're finding a whole lot more in other areas as well, and that's why that's starting to kind of balance out some.

And so, I put here a note here from FHA, and I will probably butcher his name, but well,

I don't think he's around anymore. Shivanir, a noted textual critic of the 1800s, states,

The worst corruptions of the New Testament have been subject -oriented within the first hundred years it was composed.

Now, this was written in the 1800s when they had many more copies of the Byzantine manuscripts.

As we've gotten more manuscripts, we've come to realize that that quote's not as accurate anymore.

Because we're seeing that there weren't as many changes as thought. And so, this is an argument that often,

I'm including here because when we get to the King James Only arguments, these are going to be arguments that are made for the

King James Version. And the more you understand some of this background, the better you might be able to respond to someone that makes this argument.

We're going to look at the Texas Receptus soon, but what we end up seeing is that since the 1800s, we have found thousands upon thousands of copies of the

New Testament that are much older than the Byzantine ones.

And so, some of this just doesn't hold water anymore. The Alexandrian text is another argument made.

The Alexandrian text places weight of their acceptance primarily on two manuscripts.

And you don't have to know all these things. For some, you might want to research more, but you have Codice Vicanicus and Codice Synacticus, both of which were not always agreed with one another.

So, you have this text that were based off of two older manuscripts and you see that they don't always agree.

So, even within that, you see that there's variances that were there. Now, the

Codice Synaticus also omits a great deal of scripture found in other significant manuscripts.

For example, one of the ones that many people bring up is the woman who is caught in adultery and brought to Jesus.

Now, that passage actually you see when you look at these manuscripts are found in a couple of different places. And so, it's not always in the same chapter.

And so, when you look at that, there's good reason to think that wasn't actually in the originals. It's something that's made its way in.

Could be a true story that someone put in there and it moved around.

But you have an entire section of most of the ending of Matthew 16 isn't in some of these, right?

It's not in some of the older Alexandrian manuscripts either. And so, it would be better to think that that passage just isn't in the canon.

Are there things there that are true? Yeah, I mean, we could see maybe the argument that people could be bitten by snakes and not harmed only because we saw that happen elsewhere in Acts with Paul.

But it doesn't mean that that's, you know, like, I don't want to go playing with snakes. Drinking poison and not being harmed, don't know that anywhere else in the

Bible that that exists. So, when you see these people that make doctrines based off of these, that's risky if that's the only place it exists in the

Bible because that's a problematic, okay? So, you may say, well, what about Mark 16, 15?

To go into all the world and spread the gospel, to preach the gospel. So many evangelists use that and yet that probably wasn't in the canon.

Now, the great commission in Matthew 28, 19, and 20 is to make disciples.

What's the first part of making a disciple? Evangelism. So, just something to think about. Let's not be, let's not build doctrines if the only time we see that one piece of scripture we're going to need for our argument of a doctrine only exists in one part of the

Bible that's questionable, all right? The Eastern Christians, such as Origen, were spiritualists.

This is the argument that some will make in their interpretation of scripture and being spiritual, the

Jewish mysticism would work their way in. And so, it was an area of Christianity of the greatest amount of doubt was cast on the books of the

Bible. So, this is going to be one of the reasons that they argue, that some argue, right? In the

East, they were all mystical and so they would have a mystical version of the

Bible. Were they mystical in the East? Yes, they were. You had the Gnostics that were there and they were very much influenced by Gnosticism and some of their mystical thinking and the

Jewish mysticism was influenced there. And so, could that affect the way that things were written and in their versions?

Yes, it could. That's why the advantage now we would do is look at both of these manuscripts, right?

The Alexandrian and the Byzantine. When one side says, we have the only manuscript, that's problematic, right?

Chances are you both, neither of you have it and it was based off of something that both of you have copies from.

And then, last thing you have here is, the witness of the older manuscripts must have been drawn from a comparison of the earlier manuscripts, which gave the scribes newer manuscripts, the opportunity to examine critically flaws of the older.

So, the idea here is that one of the ways we have these changes is that you do have cases where there were early on variances.

We have Irenaeus, who I think, early, I think he was late, actually, maybe late 2nd century, early 3rd century,

I think, when he was, yeah, I want to say, well, he was in that time frame, but I'm not sure when he had actually written, but he had written this about Revelation.

Revelation was a late book, maybe 90s, 90 AD, and by 90

AD, there were manuscripts that said that the number of man was 616 and others that said 666.

Now, does that affect any doctrine? Well, maybe the Left Behind series and a whole bunch of, you know, end times literature would be affected by it, some heavy metal songs, maybe, but really, is the number 666 versus 616 a big deal?

No, but Irenaeus made the point that 666 was probably a better variant at his time based on the manuscripts that they had.

So, here you see this change and he's arguing for a variance based on the manuscripts that they have that the 666 was probably the one that goes back and dates properly because of where it was and the age and things like that.

So, that gives a better argument for it because it was early on and some will say that, see, these older manuscripts must be better because there's less chance of edits or changes or and that's not necessarily true, but it doesn't mean because you have many more copies of something that because it has more copies, it's going to be more reliable.

So, what if you have many more copies of the same error? It doesn't make it right, does it? No. So, what we want to do is when we look at these things, we see these things, we want to get a

Bible that tells us where these edits are. Let's look at real quickly before we get into Texas Receptus. Let's look at the

Western manuscripts. That's their third one of the three. These are very few in number and the most unreliable family manuscripts.

This family was primarily used for the Douai version of the

Bible from the Roman Catholic Church. Now, the Western manuscripts are kind of questionable based on changes that were in there, the different things that we end up looking there at the both the sheer number of them and the variance that we find in them lead us to believe that these are not very reliable.

And so, what some think, not all clearly, some think that these were manuscripts that were edited to support doctrinal positions over time.

Now, some people will argue, well, that's what all the Bible is. It's people that edited it to say

Jesus was God when he never claimed that. And that's actually how a lot of the argument goes. But when you look at all of them, even the ones in the

Western manuscripts support that Jesus claimed to be God. You see, there aren't the manuscripts that exist other than these

Gnostic writings which end up being not scripture but other writings that just they try to argue that they are scripture or some,

I should say, argue that they're scripture today only because they end up showing what the people want said.

And that's the point. People start with a position that Jesus is not God and then they look for literature to support it.

And they'll quote that literature and say, well, this should have been in the Bible. And that's why they call them missing books of the

Bible. That is a brainwashing technique. When I say these are the missing books of the

Bible, it assumes they were part of the Bible. But that's the thing that we're questioning.

See, that premise is flawed. They're not missing books of the Bible. They were never part of the

Bible. They were never part of the canon. We never saw these Gnostic books as ever part of the canon.

And that's the point. People are trying to put them there so that they could argue for them because of what they want it to say.

Now, when you look at that, even these less reliable ones still teach major doctrine the same as the other manuscripts, alright?

So, when you are going to do some serious study, what you want to do is get a

Bible that's going to explain the differences between these manuscripts. I mentioned the New King James. New King James is going to primarily be based off of the

Byzantine manuscripts. Yet, even though it's based on that, you will see the footnotes that will let you know where the

Alexandrian texts of manuscripts differ. And so, you can read through that and see, it'll say, okay, this part's omitted in this manuscript.

This manuscript includes this word or that word. So, it becomes helpful to spot these things. Another Bible that's devoted to that would be the

NET Bible, New English Translation. You can see there where they actually not only show you the manuscripts, but the reasons they chose the translation, the word, one word over another.

That's what they have in the notes, the argument for why they translated the way they did. That becomes helpful.

Now, I said we're going to deal with this King James only debate because there are still, surprisingly, a number of people who argue that the

King James version of the Bible is the only one that people should use. And the Texas Receptus is the translation.

I mean, we must have that. Well, let's take a look. Many who claim that the King James version as the only reliable version place their belief for this on the reliability of the

Texas Receptus. And we need to deal with some things with the Texas Receptus.

And I'm hoping to be able to get through this lesson. We're going to try. We might have to rush on the end. All right. So, first off, let me give you some historical stuff with Texas Receptus.

Okay. It was written in about 1515 by Erasmus. All right. Now, you have to understand something.

This is when the printing press was first coming out. We see this today that first to print usually wins, right?

Especially if it's something that's, you know, when printing was very, very valuable.

Whoever got the first copy out, everyone was going to, that was going to become the standard. Okay. Microsoft Windows, for example, not really the best, but it was the first one out the door.

And so it got, you know, accolades. All right. Sorry. I'm not really an Apple fan either. I'm just, okay.

I use Linux. All right. So I'm a Unix head. All right. But so you guys can have your

Microsoft to Apple debate. All right. I'm going to say what's better for, you know, and if you're going to try to disagree with me and you're going to say, you're an

Apple fan. Well, Hey, I, okay. I got all three in my house, but I'm just saying Apple boys. Guess what? You're not running on Apple.

You're running on Linux. All right. BSD Unix. That's what you're running off of. All right. A version of sort of like Linux today.

So even Apple abandoned Apple's OS and goes for the Unix based. All right. Just saying.

But, but what? Yeah, I know. I've just turned everyone off. I've just made enemies with everyone out there.

Okay. I have them all in my house. I have a windows machine. Okay. I suffer with it.

I have an Apple. I actually do enjoy it, but I don't have all the software available. I understand all the pros and cons them.

Right. But, but the point being, yeah, you take it as the illustration. It was meant for the first out the door sometimes is the winner.

And that's what Erasmus was. Erasmus is in a rush. He wanted to be the first to print when the new gluten,

Gutenberg printing press. Okay. So he was in a rush. So the original

Texas Receptus, the first one out that we, where we have the full typographical, we had was full of typographical errors that included words that don't even exist in the

Greek. This is not inspired as some believe it can't be because then those brand new words are somehow all those errors must be inspired.

Okay. People try to argue that Texas Receptus was inspired and therefore the King James based on that is inspired.

This was not. If you read the writings of Erasmus at the time, he will tell you that he omitted looking at different manuscripts because it was going to take more time.

All right. He was in a rush to get the work done and out. So his original edition omitted

John 5, 7. Do we have that? Yeah. So this is what it says.

I mentioned this earlier for there are three that bear record in heaven. The father, the word and the

Holy ghost. And these three are one. Okay. So he omitted that because now here's the important thing.

He omitted it not because it wasn't found in older manuscripts. It wasn't.

But because of the outrage of those accepting the Latin Vulgate.

Even though he did find it in many, uh, found, uh, did that let me try to say that.

Even though he did not find the verse in any manuscript, he included it to keep pace in 1532.

So here you have someone who in his original edition of the Texas Receptus did not have that because it wasn't found in older manuscripts.

He though includes it because there was outrage that he omitted it.

Or sorry. Yeah, I know. Sorry. I'm tired. All right. So let me say, so he has his first edition.

He doesn't put it in. All right. That's, this is in 1515. By 1532, he's including it back in.

He's including it back in because he's trying to quell arguments that people have because the

Latin Vulgate included this. And this was a major verse that people relied on to define the

Trinity. They could not fit. It could, this had to be there. We can not have this verse and still argue for the

Trinity. That's the point. The revised Texas Receptus is largely supported by the

Byzantine manuscripts and the majority text, the latter two correcting any weak manuscript support, such as 1

John 5, 7. And so when you look at this, when we look at this, we see people try to say, well, the

Texas Receptus was inspired. And I understand some still believe that.

Not everybody. Not everyone holds to a King James only position or as intellectually dishonest as to hold this.

Because if you try to hold to that, the question is which version? The original, which had full of errors and even

Erasmus had to correct them all. And where there's that versus missing and in there and which one is the right one?

That's what you end up having to answer. There was many revisions to Texas Receptus, which one is the right one?

By the way, there's many, for those who argue for King James only, saying that the King James in English is inspired.

Again, which translation? Because no one's using the King James 1611

Bible, I'm sure. I have one on my shelf. And the reality is the language is completely different from 1611 to today.

And we end up seeing that most people can't even read 1611 English. Most people have an authorized version from the 18, more likely 1900s.

Most of them are based off of a translations from the 1900s, not 1611.

You're using an authorized version and not the 1611. So if you're saying the 1611 is inspired, well,

I think that's a problem. And the reason I think that's a problem is because people who argue that have to realize that the 1611,

A, we mentioned this several times, it included the Apocrypha. It included new words because of theological reasons like baptismo, being baptized instead of dunk or plunge.

Deacon being a deacon, deaconos being a deacon instead of a waiter of tables or servant.

Why? Because the deacons at the time they did this translation were leaders and to translate it properly would put them down a peg.

Oh, can't do that. Baptism, well, you can't make the argument for sprinkling or pouring if you're going to translate it.

Baptismo as dunk or plunge because that's not how they did it.

And so you see that the theology affected the translation of the English and they created new words causing confusion.

God is not the author of confusion. Men are. So you have the fact that if the 1611 is inspired, then the

Apocrypha is inspired. Then God has created purposeful confusion in a translation.

OK, and then you also have to deal with one of the other things that you have many different copies that were updated of the

King James. So you have to ask which one? All right, because they had to keep updating it as they'd find errors in the original printing.

So let us move on from Texas Receptus. See if we can finish up this lesson and look at early

English translations. Early English translations. We'll start with the Wycliffe translation. John Wycliffe, by the way, we're going to see that this is a little bit before King James for those who argue that we had to have the

King James version because that was the first English translation. I've had people make that argument.

It's a really bad argument because it shows how they don't understand history. OK, 1611 was not the first time we had an

English translation. And by the way, just a reminder, why did we have the King James translation?

Why did King James want that? Because there was a war between the Catholics and the Protestants and he was trying to kind of squelch this.

In England at the time, it's like you had a Catholic, he killed all the Protestants. You had a Protestant as king, killed all the

Catholics or Queen Bloody Mary, right? She killed many, many Protestants. So you had this war that was going on.

James wanted to bring peace. He knew that there needed to be a peace to this and there needed to be a state church that would have be a peace.

How to do it? You needed one Bible. The state church always had a Bible. So you were throwing out the Protestant Bible. You're throwing out the

Catholic Bible. So he did an English translation. The Protestants had the Bible in English.

OK, that's what the reformers used in English. And we're going to see their translations in a moment. The Catholics used

Latin. So the king said we're going to have an English translation. But to appease the

Catholics, he included the Apocrypha in that. So that would appease the Catholics. And he basically got them both upset with him, but they both had son they can claim victory to as well.

So John Wycliffe in 1382, long before 1611, had a translation that he did.

This was not a translation from the Greek and Hebrew, but from the

Latin. He took the Latin Vulgate and translated from Latin into English. For his efforts in translating the

Bible into a language of the people, he suffered persecution. Just look at what they did with Wycliffe.

I think it was Wycliffe, either Wycliffe or Tyndale, I forget which one, where the Catholic church so hated him that 100 years after he was dead, they dug up his body and burned it because one of the popes read that he believed that he would be bodily raised from the dead in the future.

So they dug up his body and burned it, thinking like God can't find his body if they spread his ashes everywhere.

How little do you think of God, Pope, that you're going to thwart the work of God?

Wow. But Wycliffe was one of the first, and his was not based on Greek and Hebrew, but the

Latin. Second, you have the Tyndale translation. The Tyndale translation. William Tyndale completed his translation in 1526.

So this was again before 1611, but not much more.

And actually much of the King James Bible, the translation was actually based off of Tyndale's work.

Now Tyndale, this translation was prepared from Greek manuscripts.

So he went to the Greek. He did his translation. Much of what you have in the

King James was based off of this. You then had the Great Bible. The Great Bible.

The Great Bible was translated in 1539. So when people argue actually for the

King James, they say, well, you had to be one translation that everyone used. The reason that the 1611

King James became the English Bible is because the Church of England, sorry, the government of England outlawed every other

Bible. So you couldn't use the Wycliffe. You couldn't use Tyndale. You couldn't use the Great Bible. You couldn't use the Geneva Bible.

You couldn't use any of these because the state outlawed them. And that's the point. They weren't allowed.

Okay? So that's why the King James thrived. But you see, one of the arguments is that, oh, this had to be it because God needed a

Bible in the English language and he gave us the King James, and they don't realize there were many other English ones beforehand.

So please learn your history when you make the arguments. All right? And why did these people feel the need to continue doing more translations?

Because the language changes. Okay? The Great Bible was the first authorized translation into English.

Remember I said there was this warfare going on. Okay? So you had this as the first one that was authorized to be an

English Bible. And then you had Mary come in and throw it out.

And then James comes in and does his, right? And then you have the Geneva Bible. Marian Exiles in Geneva translated this version in 1539.

And this was the Bible that was used by the Puritans. So as Queen Mary comes in, kind of shoves everyone out, all of these

Puritans that were being forced to exile or die, they had the

Geneva Bible that they translated and this is what they ended up using. One of the things you see here is though as language changes, we do need more translations to improve as our language changes.

I had a gentleman who came to our church once. We used to have evening service as well.

And he made a case in the morning when he came to visit. He believed that King James was inspired by God and the only version of the

Bible to be used. I said, you mean the 1611 version? He said, absolutely.

I said, so that version was inspired. He said, yes. I said, are you coming back for evening service? He said, yes. I said, good.

I'll enjoy it. He didn't understand why I would enjoy it, but I knew why. When he came, I actually had a reprinted version of the 1611

Bible in its original typeset English. And so what I did was I walked up to him in evening service, because this is just the kind of guy

I am. I asked him if he had a 1611 King James. He said, yes. And he showed me his Bible. And I opened his

Bible and I looked and I showed him where it said that he had a 1935 authorized

Bible. And he went, what? That's King James. What does it matter? I said, no, you don't have a

King James. I took his Bible and I handed him my 1611. I said, use this tonight for the preaching.

This is your inspired version, not this thing you have in your hand. So I took his

Bible and made him sit through service. And after service, he could not get his

Bible fast enough. I said, why? That's the 1611. That's the one that's inspired. He said,

I can't even read this thing. It's not even making sense. It doesn't, the word blessed isn't spelled with F's.

They're spelled with S's. I said, that's right. But that's the one you claimed is inspired. So you have a problem now.

Either what you claim is wrong and the 1611 is not inspired or it is inspired and you're reading the wrong book.

He didn't want to concede on either point. He just wanted his Bible back. So, but that wraps up some of our

English translations. Next lesson, we're going to look and compare with some of the more modern translations. If you have any questions about this or any of the other lessons, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org,

academyatstrivingforeternity .org. You can go to our store where you could pick up a copy of our syllabus.

Just head over to the store, pick up the syllabus at strivingforeternity .org.

Go into our store. Syllabuses are about $25 each. You can pick those up and have those with you.

Fill in the blanks. Oh, I missed a blank. Okay, I was just told I missed a blank. Under English translations, the word is

Latin. I usually repeat blanks so people have it. I was told. So when it says the

Wycliffe translation, number two, this was not a translation from the Greek or Hebrew, but it was a translation from Latin and that was the blank there.

If you go to our store, you can also pick up my new book. Hey, that's cool. You didn't put the, yeah, you forgot.

Okay. So you can pick up my new book that is hiding my face there, but is

What Do They Believe? And that is a new book that's out.

If you want to pick up a copy of that, that is at our store. And oh, that was nice.

You just faded it out. That was quick. All right. You're pretty spiffy there.

Pretty good. All right. So, but that is What Do They Believe is a Systematic Theology of the

Major Western Religions. That is for sale. Let you know if you're watching this live or near time.

April, actually it's 9th, 10th and 11th is Jersey Fire. We're doing a pre -conference again. We're going to have

Michael Stockwell and Robert Gray do some outreach.

We're also going to have guys from Hearts for the Lost. They're going to be coming out and doing some training. They're going to do the pre -conference.

Then we have Dan Phillips, Michael Coghlan, Carl Kirby Jr. and myself that are going to be speaking.

It's going to be a really good time. Very good for be out there.

If you have not been to one of these, I strongly, strongly encourage it. You can also help us if you want by just shopping on Amazon, by shopping at Amazon Smile.

Smile .amazon .com. Go there, put in Striving Fraternity Ministries as the ministry you want to support and then they give a percentage of everything that you spend toward us, which is really nice.

And then lastly, well actually before I do that, let me just say the Bible Interpretation Made Easy. If we have that,

Bible Interpretation Easy, you can invite us out to your church to come and speak. It's a weekend seminar.

We teach people how to interpret the Bible. And that is a Friday night, Saturday, intense lessons.

Really good to have. I think we're setting up to go out to Portland this June to do that.

So that's in the works. And then lastly, the person to encourage. Why do we do this? Some people have asked why we put a person to encourage.

I understand that not everyone goes out of their way to try to encourage the person we say to encourage. I know.

I understand. But the reason we do it is to try to train ourselves, all of us, we should be training ourselves to encourage everyone that we can.

And most people hear the most wonderful things about them after they're dead. Oh wait, no.

They don't hear it. Everyone else does. Right? How about you tell the people while they're alive how much you're encouraged by them?

And so this is my opportunity to try to encourage people and doing it in a public forum,

I guess. And in this case, to thank someone. This is really good because this person is going to have to encourage themselves.

That's right. Christine LaVallee is the one who every week will go into the Striving Fraternity Facebook group and mention who it is that is to be encouraged each week.

And now she knows she has to encourage herself. I know. I just was going to have fun with that.

But encourage her. She's been, she's a dear sister who has supported Striving Fraternity.

She helps us out in the chat room and things with setting up Facebook reminders to people, invites them to come and attend the class.

And she's active in helping to manage the Facebook group. So we really value her in that way.

She's been really, really busy because she just bought a new home and she's been trying to set it up. And I know she wants me to come check out the home when

I get down to Florida. We are going to try. But encourage Christine. And now Christine, little note to you, as you have to post, you've got to remind everyone to encourage you this week.

Have fun with that. So that's this lesson.

Next lesson, as I said, we're going to deal with early translations of the Bible, or sorry, modern translations of the

Bible. And we're going to look into wrapping this up. Where are we going from here? The next, before we get into book four, we're going to actually go into,

I mentioned that what do they believe? I'm going to go through. Basically, we're going to start our world religions section, our school for world religions.

And as you're seeing, we're also trying to spread out to not just have teach through one class, but we're going to be trying to teach different levels over time.

We're trying to get the basics down and then build upon them. So we're going to start with that and then we'll finish up.

It's not that I'm trying to put off the lessons on end times. It's just, I'm trying to put off the lessons on end times.

No, I'm not afraid of getting into those discussions. They get to be a lot of fun, but we do want to try to keep some breath as well as we do these.

So we're going to do that. That's where we're headed. You want to pick up those. Those syllabuses are available now on the books at the bookstore, the world religions study.

So you can pick those up if you want. And until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.